Presentation of Saint-Martin

The island of Saint-Martin is located north of Saint-Barthélemy and south of Anguilla. Its southern part, known as Sint Maarten, belongs to the Netherlands, whereas its northern part (52 sq. km, 28,518 inhabitants) belongs to France.
Saint-Martin is an overseas community (collectivité d'outre-mer), as prescribed by Law of 21 February 2007, published in the French
official gazette on 22 February 2007. This new status was approved by
local referendum (95.5% yes) on 7 December 2003. Beforehand,
Saint-Martin was a municipality forming, together with the
municipality of Saint-Barthélemy, the third arrondissement (northern
islands) of the overseas department of Guadeloupe.

Ivan Sache, 16 October 2011

Official flag of Saint-Martin

The official flag of Saint-Martin is the French
national flag.

Ivan Sache, 18 February 2005

Flag of the Collectivity of Saint-Martin

The Collectivity of Saint-Martin uses a white flag charged either with the logo or the emblem of the collectivity (photo, photo, photo).

Paraskevas Renesis, Jens Pattke & Ivan Sache, 22 November 2016

Flag with the emblem

Flag of the Collectivity of Saint-Martin - Image by Jens Pattke, 3 January 2016

At last on 26 October 2010 the Territorial Council adopted the new emblem (image) for the island that had been chosen last July.

[...]
Arnell, a first year architectural décor student at École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Appliqués et Métiers d'Art (ENSAAMA) "Olivier de Serres" in Paris swayed the judges with his Flying Pelican canvas featuring the symbols the island is best known for, such as the Flamboyant and Coralita flowers, the border monument, slavery walls, salt, sea, sunrise, mountains, and shells. These were all headed by a scroll depicting the paper the Treaty of Concordia [the Partition
Treaty signed on 23 March 1648 by France and the Netherlands] was
written on.
[...]
"With the sunrise, and the Pelican, the idea was to show new
beginnings and the new future of the Collectivité, the Pelican taking off, but keeping a protective eye on the population," explained Arnell of his winning design that took two months to complete using acrylics and water colours. "I also included the yellow butterflies which are common on the island and wanted to recall the texture of the paper the
Treaty was written on. I used a tinted grey canvas because that brings
out the colours.
[...]
Fifty persons submitted presentations for the competition and
participants were required to follow specific rules and guidelines
under the theme, "The Future Inspired by Our Heritage." The
competition was driven by the need for a fresh emblem to go with the
Collectivités new logos.
A judging panel composed of six men and six women coming from various
professional backgrounds had the difficult task of judging the work.
Territorial Councillor Guillaume Arnell was Head of the Jury.
"We had to have separate judging sessions of 15 entries at a time in
order to reduce the original 50 down to a final 20," said Arnell. "It
was a difficult task."
Judging criteria and scoring included written presentation (15
points), artistic merit (15 points), technical aspect (30 points),
integration of nature, cultural and historical elements (20 points),
and overall presentation (20 points).
[...]
[The Daily Herald, 23 July 2010]

Paraskevas Renesis & Ivan Sache, 16 October 2011

Former flag of the Collectivity of Saint-Martin - Image by Ben Cahoon, 11 January 2016

The flag used by the Collectivity c. 2007-2009 was white with the Collectivity's former emblem. A similar flag, with a slightly diofferent rendition of the arms, is displayed at the Flag Museum, Budapest

Jens Pattke & Zoltán Horváth, 17 February 2008

In issue 21 of the vexillological bulletin edited by László Balough (at some date between 1995 and 1997), the flag of Saint-Martin is shown as a light blue flag with a shield.

Jaume Ollé, 30 August 1998

Flag with the logo

Flag of the Collectivity of Saint-Martin - Image by Zoltán Horvath, 5 November 2010

The ribbon forms a "S M" monogram, for Saint-Martin. It symbolizes
sophistication, elegance and stylishness. Very flexible, the ribbon
adapts itself to any shape and to twisting and tension it can be
submitted to. The ribbon cannot be cut easily and is robust. Light, it
can fly in a windborne move and gives a wavy effect on water.
Therefore, the image as built in the logo suggests traveling waves:
the multiplication of skills creates energy, which is traveling,
propelling to the sea and beyond, towards future and success. These
terms represent saint-Martin and the Collectivity: adaptation to
constraint, flexibility, dynamism and strength. The ribbon is a modern
symbol of solidarity and hope.

The ribbon represents a stylization of the sea (blue) and of Fort
Louis (green), forming a "social concept": the sea and the fort are
symbols of Saint-Martin recognized by all and to be easily adopted by
all citizens.
The two ribbons (blue and green) form a "federating concept": they
unite in spite of their different color and surround the word "Saint-
Martin". Therefore, the logo gathers the strengths of the two ribbons
and unite them to Saint-Martin while maintaining a wide opening.
[Official website]

Fort Louis (photo) was built in 1789 by Knight de Durat, Governor of Saint-Martin and Saint-Barthélemy, to watch the port of Marigot, where coffee, salt, rum and sugar were stored. English squads coming from
neighboring Anguilla, as well as all kinds of pirates, enjoyed looting
the port. Once abandoned, the fort was restored in the 19th century
and eventually decommissioned.

Dubious flag of Saint-Martin

This flag is reported as the flag of Saint-Martin in László Balogh's A Világ Nemzetei - Zaszlók, címerek, térképek, adatok[blg94].

Christian Berghänel, 30 August 1998

This flag cannot be seen anywhere on the island. The local political leaders never sawit nor heard about them.

Jérôme Sterkers, 27 September 2006

According to Everett D. Emerson (The Flag Bulletin[tfb], No. 218, p. 172, 2004), this flag is spurious. He says that his cousin visited the island four times and reports never having seen this flag displayed on land or sea or even for sale. He adds, "One might speculate that the 'flag' as depicted was from an inaccurate verbal description of the legitimate [Dutch] Sint Maarten flag, that it was a hoax, or that it was an idea for a flag to be commercially marketed that never achieved usage.
Emerson traces the origin of the supposed Saint-Martin error to an anonymous author who wrote Eiropas Pilsetis I
(Riga, 2001) [l9v01]. That author attributed the flag to Saint-Barthélemy, possibly through a typo, but Emerson adds "Several Internet sources attribute
it to French St. Martin."

Al Kirsch & Ned Smith, 18 December 2005

This flag design is similar to a white Martini glass on a blue background with a little bit of liquor on it (red) and a slice of
lemon (yellow). I think somebody was playing with the similarity of
the words Martin and Martini and decided to make his own design.